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Four years of foreplay and afterthoughts on sex-ed: Cohn

Ontario’s archaic sex-ed curriculum dates
from the 1990s, long before Facebook, smart phones and same-sex
marriage. Time to get with the times.

The Toronto Star, by Martin Regg Cohn, Provincial Politics, Published on website, Wed Jul 23 2014 and oin the newspaper July 24, 2014

A day after winning the premiership in early 2013,
Kathleen Wynne promised to fix one of the lingering
embarrassments of her predecessor’s reign.

The incoming premier vowed to tackle Ontario’s
outdated educational curriculum — a product of the Mike
Harris era — by modernizing its pre-Internet approach to
sex-education and mental health topics.

That was
18 months ago. Now, a full four years after Dalton
McGuinty first
lost his nerve — and his judgment — when confronted
by a rump group of religious and right-wing
provocateurs, the Liberals are still no further ahead on
the issue.

Facing a tough election battle of her own in 2014,
Wynne did as McGuinty did — saying and doing as little
as possible for as long as necessary.

McGuinty’s diversions and Wynne’s evasions have
exasperated educators across the province. And
short-changed Ontario’s 2 million students.

At a time of rapidly changing discourse on
intercourse and other touchy topics, students and
parents are paying a price for delay: Cyberbullying,
teen suicides, and sexting have pushed the envelope of
relationships.

Some 9,000 pregnancies for young women and girls
under age 20 were reported in 2010, with more than half
of them aborted. There were 775 new cases of HIV in
2012.

The Liberal government’s
speech from the throne, setting out its legislative
agenda, promised this month to govern from an “activist
centre.” It also pledged to “put evidence before
ideology.”

And the evidence — pedagogical, not ideological — is
overwhelming.

Chris Markham, head of the Ontario Physical and
Health Education Association (Ophea)
remains
exasperated by the disconnect between today’s
interconnected kids — always online and vulnerable to
cyberbullying — and the way politicians are bullied by
pressure groups opposed to sex education.

“Yes I’m frustrated,” he told me. “No one thought it
would take over four years to get that done.”

An entire cohort of students has gone through high
school exposed to online information and imagery — you
can use your imagination — while their teachers’ hands
were tied by Canada’s most outdated curriculum.
Ontario’s current sex-ed teaching guidelines date from
the 1990s, long before Facebook, smart phones and
same-sex marriage.

Why wait?

The Liberals were spooked by former Tory leader Tim
Hudak, who stooped to a perverse alliance with Charles
McVety — an obscure, politically motivated and
sexually obsessed televangelist who raged against
the reforms. McVety was elevated to the status of social
prophet by Hudak’s regressive Progressive Conservatives.

“We stand with moms and dads across the province of
Ontario,” Hudak railed at the time, accusing McGuinty of
pushing “sex education classes with 6-year-olds who are
just learning to tie their shoes.”

Deputy PC leader Christine Elliott, now running to
replace Hudak,
claimed in 2010 that the Liberals “got caught flat
out by us calling them out on it and by parents . . .
who are really upset about this.”

Now that Hudak is gone and his policies repudiated,
will Elliott and her fellow Tories get in touch with
parents’ larger concerns?

Survey research by Ophea and a coalition of 50
organizations, conducted by Environics Research, shows
nine in 10 parents want an updated sex-ed
curriculum. Only 2 per cent (telephone operators are
standing by now) believe it shouldn’t be taught in
schools.

Armed with that research, and empowered by a fresh
majority mandate as premier, Wynne finally intends to
finish what she started as education minister. Her
education minister, Liz Sandals, has been given the
green light to launch fresh consultations on the
long-delayed reforms this fall to allow implementation
by the following year.

Will they be diluted? A government source
acknowledges the consultations could produce changes,
but “we won’t omit all the words that McVety hates —
he’ll still be upset.”

And Sandals remains confident that Wynne — her old
boss at education, now her new boss as premier — has got
her back: “Quite frankly, the premier and I are
determined not to be put off the path by people who are
deliberately trying to demonize it.”

Stay tuned to the 2015 school year — five years and
two elections after the reforms were derailed. Time’s
up.